People say that this world means something. It means a society where we all live. And it means Time through which all of us flow. Perhaps it also means insanity to someone, or assymetry. It is normal to many! And many, likewise, are normal to it! But there are some who go on procrastinating on whether this world is really for them… in the ulterior sense of the word!
I fed a dog every morning. I gave it tea and biscuits. It was my only partner at morning walks. It was not that I owned a dog. No one, in this world, owns anybody. Even my parents disowned me right on the day I was born. I didn’t even know who they were! As I grew up, and as people around me kept on asking that, I gradually developed a very normal way of responding to there questions. As if they were never there, my parents; as if… I was an entity not requiring any further introduction through the virtue of their sweet presence. That dog was not mine. It was a street dog and ate street food. And sometimes, it ate biscuits with me that I somehow got to manage from the road-side tea-shops. I loved my dog very much. Because, in the true sense of the word, I had nobody else in my life.
This story is about that dog. We had been living a life together. Sometimes on the streets, sometimes under the bus-shade. Eating whatever we found.. whenever we found. Things were going nicely. But then, suddenly, I discovered that the thing has caught a disease. People said it would be dying soon. It was no important news to me! I had developed this unique quality of quickly forgetting all about someone or something as soon as I learned that it would be of no longer meaning to me. I don’t know whether it is a selfish habit to possess. Rather, I think, it’s all about my present. I don’t believe in a present that is full of sorrow. I can’t stand it. So whenever my close ones get ready to move away from me, I try and show that i don’t care much! Eventually they forget me. And, perhaps, I forget them too. With Time.
So, my dog was ill. And as I grew sure that it would be dying in a month, I gradually built this idea of permanently getting dettached from it. So, one very early morning, I packed my bags (whatever a vagabond like me afforded to have, being tucked away inside a cloth-packet!) and left. It was sleeping. It didn’t sense me leaving.
The most awkward thing hapenned after that. I found, after a few hours, that it was following me. My dog could hardly walk. Its limbs were shaking. And inspite of its such a state of distress, it has quietly followed me all this while. I stopped for a moment and returned to it. And I said, “Go back. I don’t want to be with you anymore!” And it said back to me, “I know you want to be with me. Always. That’s why I am following you! Else I could have simply layed on the foothpath and died!”
So, I understood, the ugly thing had followed me silently all this while not for the sake of getting food, with a further desire to live… but only to appease my heart. One of the most violent emotions a human being undergoes is when the person whom he loves so dearly tells him that he loves him back only because he is loved. I didn’t know if I went insane. Or, rather… if I was in rage. But I kicked my dog so hard that it died on the spot.
I laughed a lot after that whenever I remembered the incident. It ocurred to be really funny. I don’t know why I did it. Perhaps only to emphasize my love for the creature more than I emphasized his existence! It was a interpretation that I forwarded to myself. Else, everyone said: I was mad. And I believed: I was mad too!
So, the rest never mattered much. Time flowed on. And I got a new dog. And I forgot everything relating to my old dog. Perhaps, I even forgot my love that I had for him… or, did it hide so permanently in the deeper folds of my heart that I ever failed to recognize it in future – ..I don’t know. But the funniest part was, I never forgot my last kick which was responsible for its death.
That kick kept on haunting me throughout the rest of my life. And everyday, since then, I wondered whether my dog would have really died had I not kicked it!
Symmetry 